Using Fluid With Flow
Fluid is a popular tool to turn web apps into semi-native Mac apps. Fluid apps have all of the advantages of a web app while feeling a bit more like a Mac app. You can use Flow with Fluid as well, giving you another way to integrate it with your Mac workflow. While Flow isn’t fully supported in Fluid, since it uses older web technology, it can still be a nice way to use Flow on your Mac.
Getting started with Fluid is easy. Just download it from the Fluid site, run the application, then enter the following info in the dialog:
- URL: https://app.getflow.com/
- Name: Flow (or anything you like, actually)
- Icon: Use Website Favicon
Moments later, you’ll have a new Flow Fluid app in your Applications folder. Once you start it, you may need to log into your Flow account if you were not already logged into Flow in Safari. Flow will work the same for the most part in Fluid, and you’ll still need to be online to use it. But, you can now get to Flow directly from your Dock, and can even get notification badges right on the Flow icon. Plus, Flow includes a nice iOS style icon that will blend in nicely with your other apps without any tweaking.
When Flow’s running in Fluid, you’ll see an extra setting for the icon badge in your settings. Just open the Preferences menu, select General settings, and then you can choose to show the number of tasks in your inbox, flagged or upcoming tasks, or your number of unread notifications.
If you prefer to use Flow in Fluid by default, you can even tweak your settings to make all links to Flow from the Mac app and emails open in your Flow Fluid app. To do this, you’ll need Choosy app, a neat tool that lets you choose what browser to use for each web app. You can try it for free for 45 days, or purchase a copy for $12. Once you’ve installed it, you can open its settings and set all Flow links to open in your Flow Fluid app. This is yet another way you can make Flow feel more integrated with your Mac.
If you’re using a Windows or Linux PC, you can’t use Fluid, but you can get a similar effect by integrating Flow with Chrome’s Application Shortcuts.